Back to Learn

Interactive Lineage

The Lineage of Project Management Methodologies

A century of process theory descends from two trunks: Taylor's plan-and-control school and the Deming and Toyota empirical school. Everything since, from waterfall to Scrum to SAFe, is mostly recombination. Hover any methodology to see exactly what it copied and who copied it.

Influence links are curated to the most directly documented borrowings. Source material worth reading directly: Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), Deming's Out of the Crisis (1982), Ohno's Toyota Production System (1988), Takeuchi and Nonaka's The New New Product Development Game (1986), and Brooks' The Mythical Man-Month (1975).

How to read this: each pill is a methodology placed at its year of first appearance in one of three trunks. The curved links show who copied whom. Hover a methodology to light up everything it descends from (warm) and everything that descends from it (cool). Click to pin it and read the full story. Switch views with the tabs to recolor by trunk or era.

Lineage of Project Management Methodologies · Study Spark